La-Z-Boy Inc. has always believed that comfort and craftsmanship go hand in hand. That same spirit guided the company as it reimagined how to support and empower its people. Nearly a century after creating its first recliner, La-Z-Boy continues to evolve—this time by transforming how its teams connect, grow, and lead. La-Z-Boy is an iconic symbol of American comfort, but its growth into a global, multi-brand company created significant complexity. As a company of brands with multiple arms, including manufacturing, retail, distribution, and corporate, its people and data were deeply siloed. This fragmentation was a major challenge for strategic talent management.
The goal isn't to replace human involvement, but to augment it by taking on the heavy lifting so our people can spend more time where human judgment, creativity, and connection have the greatest impact.
Director of HR Technology & Operations
“I’ve had to experience digging through files before at our office. It’s not fun,” says Jessie Heath, director of global talent, culture, and belonging. The company’s previous HR system was just a data-catcher, lacking the tools to develop its workforce. Career paths were often trapped within a single business unit. “Historically, if you were in manufacturing, that’s where you stayed and where you expected your growth opportunities to be,” Heath says. “We want our employees to have more options.”
A modern foundation for a legacy brand.
La-Z-Boy needed to break down these barriers and unite its talent on one platform. The company chose Workday Human Capital Management as its new foundation, engaging its long-time partner, Korn Ferry, to help integrate and structure the system. "Korn Ferry's been an amazing partner for us for over a decade," Heath notes, highlighting their role in building the company's job architecture, which became a critical component of the Workday deployment. With research-backed talent frameworks in place, Korn Ferry has helped La-Z-Boy bring consistency to how work is defined and organized, aligning recruiting, performance, and mobility in a way that Workday can extend across every part of the organization.
The transformation from paper to platform was immediate. "Workday provides a consolidated, real-time view of the entire organization,” says Heath. "No matter where I am, I have visibility into our plants around the country. I can check in on our Dayton plant and see where they are with their talent review. That helps us create a better hiring strategy."
Opening new paths for the people who build comfort.
With a unified HCM foundation, La-Z-Boy’s next goal was to empower employees to own their careers. The company activated Workday Skills Cloud and Career Hub to create new pathways for growth across the business.
"One powers the other," Heath says. These tools are dismantling the old, rigid silos. "Now I see people from retail reaching out to someone at corporate. Before now, those connections would have never existed."
We want to bring comfort to our employees by improving the overall employee experience, using Workday Sana and agents to eliminate administrative friction.
Director of HR Technology & Operations
A smarter way to stay human.
La-Z-Boy has embraced Workday AI not as a replacement for human connection, but as an enabler for it. "We don't see AI as replacing human connections—we see it as removing the administrative work that gets in the way of them," explains Leeann Mackin, director of HR technology and operations. "AI is simply another tool in the toolbox to help automate repetitive tasks and build efficiencies so our people can spend more time on meaningful development, coaching, and collaboration."
La-Z-Boy has enabled the majority of available Workday AI capabilities and is taking a thoughtful, value-driven approach to AI adoption. The team is currently evaluating the Workday Self Service Agent in a preview environment and assessing Payroll Agent capabilities, focusing on use cases, business value, user adoption, and operational efficiencies. “This measured approach helps ensure new AI investments align with business priorities and deliver meaningful outcomes before broader deployment,” says Mackin. To ensure agents pull consistent and reliable answers, Mackin’s team is establishing strict content governance across payroll, benefits, and job aids—grounding AI in Workday as the secure system of record. "For us, effective AI starts with trusted content," Mackin adds. "The goal isn't replacing headcount, but creating capacity for our teams to focus on higher-value business partnership."
This human-first philosophy is already delivering tangible outcomes. Through Workday Peakon Employee Voice, synthesizing 60,000 to 80,000 engagement comments instantly allowed leaders to address specific employee needs, resulting in dramatic drops in turnover. Furthermore, by replacing paper forms and streamlining direct access via mobile, La-Z-Boy achieved a 10%+ reduction in plant manager administrative time and saved $136K in HR shared services costs—proving that empowering people with better tools drives measurable business value.
"That ability to respond quickly improves morale, because our people know we hear them," says Heath.
Settle in and stay a while.
Looking ahead, La-Z-Boy plans to build on its Workday foundation to increase its focus on people and growth. “Our partnership with Workday and Korn Ferry helped us create a more connected, intuitive experience for every employee,” says Heath. “It’s about helping people see a future here where they can keep learning, advancing, and feel part of something bigger.”